More Sexual Abuse Victims of Bozeman Teacher Identified

A total of six men, or teenaged boys are now accusing William Crews, 59, of sexually abusing them when they were Bozeman students.

Deputies arrested Crews Thursday night on three counts of sexual battery after three students came forward. Monday, three more were identified.

Sheriff's investigators say they identified these three new victims through information they picked up during their initial investigation. All say they had inappropriate sexual relationships with Bozeman eighth grade social studies teacher William Crews.

"Most of the victims were encountered initially due to the fact they were his students," said Maj. Tommy Ford with the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

The six victims were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen years old when they claim Crews befriended them at school, lured them to a storage unit he rented on Highway 77, showed them pornographic videos and performed sex acts on them.

Investigators believe some of the activity, which took place from 2001 to 2011, also took place on out of town, non-school related trips.

"There were some out of town trips. I think some of them was related to car shows and things like that," said Maj. Ford.

Crews was the president of the Classic Cruisers Cars Club. The first victim to come forward is now in his 20's. He waited several years before reporting the abuse.

"Many times (the perpetrator) will groom their victims for a very long time to get their guard down, to get them to trust them, to get them to consent to the relationship and really confuse the victim about what's going on which is why a lot of times the victims don't come forward. They have very confused feelings about the person who abused them," said the sexual abuse treatment program Coordinator at the Children’s Advocacy Center, Laura Hamm.

Hamm says the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State has encouraged more male victims in general to come forward about their abuse.

"There's a lot of male victims out there but there's a lot more shame I think for them or fear that they'll be labeled as a homosexual or a lot of other reasons of embarrassment that they have a harder time coming forward. So the more national attention it gets, the easier it becomes for them to talk about what happened to them," said Hamm.

Superintendent Bill Husfelt was initiating termination procedures against Crews, but that's now moot. Crews resigned from his teaching position Monday. He remains in the Bay County jail on $120,000 bond. We requested an interview with Crews Monday, but jail staff told us his medical status wouldn't allow it.

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